


there is no escape

by starzinoureyes



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson, Hades (Video Game 2018)
Genre: Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, but no real specifics about the story, just mentions of some of the foes in tartarus, mentions of zagreus/thanatos, minor spoilers for hades
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-09
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 12:46:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28653726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starzinoureyes/pseuds/starzinoureyes
Summary: Jared started playing a new video game, and is desperate for his boyfriend to play it too.
Relationships: Jared Kleinman/Connor Murphy
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	there is no escape

**Author's Note:**

> this is a pinch-hit prompt fill for bewytched on tumblr as part of the sincerely us gift exchange. the original prompt was "Jared and Connor, Jared leading Connor how to play his favorite game, Connor sucks at it" 
> 
> i hope you like this!
> 
> anyone who has talked to me in the past two months knows that Hades has been the absolute only thing on my mind thanks to alex boniello. it is an absolutely perfect game and i highly recommend it to anyone (i'm not a big video game player, but hades is just *chefs kiss*), and i have often thought about how jared's nerdy ass would very much enjoy this game. as i mentioned in the tags, very minor spoilers for the game. nothing to do with the game's plot, but if you're someone who wanted to play this and likes going into games completely blind there are a couple mentions of what to expect early on, as well as some mention of game strategy.

Jared’s least favorite part about finals was that he didn’t get to see Connor outside of school for two full weeks.

The Murphys were generally pretty lenient with the boys these days, but Connor’s mom had firm rules about studying for exams, which unfortunately meant that Jared was left entertaining himself in his downtime, save for their nightly facetimes after Connor’s parents had gone to bed. It reminded him of life before Connor, honestly, which was significantly more boring than life with Connor, but at the very least it meant that he had some experience in the area.

Video games had always been his fallback, and while he probably should’ve used the time to study as well, he found himself on the computer or his Switch killing time until late into the night. Sure, most of his favorites were better when Connor could play with him, but he hadn’t worked on his personal Minecraft server in a while, and surely there were dozens of games he’d been meaning to start. Now felt like as good a time as any.

Jared was very particular about which games he played. There always had to be some sort of reason to play, something to work towards besides just beating his own score. He didn’t just want to play what was popular, he needed to be hooked by something. Nothing was more engaging than a good story to enhance the gameplay, so he regularly found himself scouring Reddit and Twitch and YouTube and other gaming forums in hopes of finding the perfect thing to start.

Today it was _Hades_ , because apparently right before he had to take six exams was the perfect time to tackle a video game that he’d heard required a hefty time investment. It wasn’t like he actually had anything better to do, he would spend a minimal amount of time studying anyways.

“Connor, you’ve _got_ to try this game,” Jared gushed on their call that night. On the other side of the screen, Connor rolled his eyes.

“I’ve heard that before,” Connor pointed out.

“And have I _ever_ steered you wrong?”

“You made me play a crab fighting game.”

“Okay, that doesn’t count, I did that _ironically_ ,” Jared huffed. “I’m serious about this one.”

It took him thirty runs to clear for the first time. His heart rate was as high as it had ever been and he was honest-to-god shaking from adrenaline but he felt like an absolute legend and immediately ran again. And again. And before he knew it, it was after midnight and he had to be up in six hours and he was absolutely going to hate himself in the morning but it would be _so_ worth it because he hadn’t been this invested in something in so long.

“Connor, _please_ ,” Jared begged, tugging at his arm while Connor attempted to clean out his locker.

“Babe, I never said no. But you harassing me about it doesn’t change that my mom took my Switch until after the semester.”

Jared groaned dramatically and flopped back against a locker.

“That’s a whole week away,” he complained. “What if we break up or something before that?”

Connor looked up just enough to smirk at him. “You making plans?” he teased.

“You know what I mean,” Jared huffed. 

“I really don’t,” Connor replied, pulling paper upon paper out of his disaster of a locker. It wasn’t nearly as bad as Jared’s (though Jared’s backpack was the worst of all), but it was bad enough that even Connor knew he needed to throw some things away before break. Jared had more important matters on his mind.

“Please? We can hide in the library and you can start a game on mine. You mom won’t even have to know.”

“You’re a terrible influence,” Connor informed him. “Like, my parents should hate you. And the fact that they don’t makes _me_ hate you.”

“You could never,” Jared replied smugly. “Because you _looooove_ me.”

Connor sighed and stood, closing his locker and leaning down to kiss Jareds cheek. “Don’t test your luck. See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Jared grumbled.

For someone who claimed not to give a fuck about rules, Connor sure seemed to follow his mom’s rules. Sometimes, at least. 

Okay, so it was really just this one time, but Jared was bored and needed attention.

So he devoted nearly every minute of his free time to getting better at _Hades_. He’d already cleared, and cleared with heat, and cleared in under twenty minutes, and cleared with all the weapons, and he had a feeling he would come up on the end of the story before he knew it. He desperately needed to get Connor started on this. He needed someone to talk to about it.

He practically dragged Connor from the school the minute the final bell rang on their last day of exams.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Connor laughed, but didn’t put up much of a resistance. 

“Told you. _Hades_ ,” Jared replied, lightly shoving him in the direction of the passenger’s seat.

‘You’re still on that?” Connor huffed.

“ _Yes_ , Connor!” Jared turned to him frantically. “It’s like...the game of the year, easily. Possibly one of the best games ever. I’m not going to stop talking about this, and you’re going to play it.”

“Okay, okay,” Connor agreed, raising his hands in surrender. “I don’t have my Switch though. So we’re gonna have to stop by mine, if you wanna stay at yours tonight.”

“I’ve got mine with me, we can just go to yours?” Jared suggested, long past any shame when it came to inviting himself over to the Murphys’. 

Jared was no less persistent when he turned the car off again, grabbing Connor’s arm on the way to the house to drag him the rest of the way. Never mind that Connor’s legs were longer and he could walk faster than Jared anyways, it was the principle of the thing.

“Hi boys, how’d it go?” Connor’s mom called from the living room when the front door opened.

“Great!” Jared called behind them, his steps never faltering as he pulled Connor upstairs to his room and shut the door behind them. Only then did he finally release his grip on Connor to search for his Switch among the various piles of crap in the room. Connor beat him to it, grabbing it from the top of his dresser where his mom had probably left it sometime during the day. Jared blamed it on the fact that he hadn’t seen his boyfriend in two weeks that he’d missed something so obvious. 

Jared snatched it from his hand and opened the Nintendo store, glaring at Connor’s knowing smirk when he had to hand it back for Connor to type in his password. He pulled up the game and hit buy without waiting for further approval, knowing that if Connor had any real objections he wouldn’t have even made it to this step in the process.

Then came the excruciating wait for the game to download.

“Here, watch me play for a bit,” Jared instructed, pulling his console out of his backpack and opening his most recent save. “Okay, so you’re not gonna have all the same power-ups I do at first,” he warned, equipping the blade with Poseidon’s keepsake and Mort (as always) and taking the heat down a little bit, so that Connor could witness the game without so much noise. “Like these guys you have to earn by gifting the gods nectar, and there’s stuff in the mirror that you have to earn too, so don’t expect to clear on your first run.”

Connor, to his credit, just let Jared babble as he breezed through the first few rooms, rather than pointing out that he had no clue what Jared was talking about. He was a good sport about it all, really.

Jared couldn’t contain his gleeful squeal when Thanatos appeared, which led to him launching into a whole explanation about how not only was this game incredible, “it’s gay too, Connor! They’re gay! Together!” Connor just smiled and kissed his cheek. Jared didn’t think he was actually paying attention. Jared mostly just appreciated having Connor there again, anyways.

It wasn’t until after dinner that Connor’s game was actually ready to play, and Jared managed to put his own Switch down for a few minutes to watch him start. He was practically vibrating with excitement on his boyfriend’s behalf, snuggled against his side just like Connor had been when Jared was playing. 

“The fuck am I even supposed to be doing?” Connor grumbled as he took a few hits in the first room, mostly just button-mashing as he tried to figure out the controls.

“B is dash, Y is attack, X is special, and A is cast,” Jared recited. “Don’t worry about cast your first few runs. You’ll need it eventually, but the special is gonna do the most damage. Just spam that and you should be okay.”

Connor rolled his eyes but nodded as he advanced, trying to do what Jared had instructed.

“What the actual fuck is this shit?” Connor huffed. He really wasn’t doing too bad from Jared’s perspective, but he’d taken a decent amount of damage already, and Jared could sympathize with how quickly the health bar depleted on the early runs. 

“You’re doing well!” he encouraged.

“This game is so fucking dumb, what the fuck have you been going on about?” Connor complained when he finally died after he was his by a witch orb.

“Connor, dying is the entire _point_ ,” Jared pointed out. “Like, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You just die over and over to progress the story. It’s not supposed to be easy.”

“If you say so,” Connor grumbled in response. He was mostly quiet as he went through the dialogue inside the House. Jared pointed him to the mirror in Zagreus’s room, explaining how the purple gem things were called darkness and that was what he could use to power up, before Connor started another run, which had a similar outcome only a few rooms in.

“Jared, seriously, this is fucking stupid.”

“You won’t be saying that once you get the hang of it,” Jared urged. “Please? For me?”

“I don’t even understand the _point_!” Connor exclaimed.

“Babe, you’re battling out of the literal underworld, did you expect it to be easy?”

“No, but I expected to get more than three rooms in without dying.”

“And you will!” Jared promised. “I have like. A hundred hours of gameplay already. I’ve played this _a lot_. It’s seriously all about time. Just keep playing. You haven’t even gotten to the gay stuff yet.”

“Don’t tempt me with gay stuff,” Connor rolled his eyes, fighting a grin, and Jared tilted his head up to kiss his cheek.

“I promise, it’s a really fun game, okay? I wouldn’t have asked you to play it if it was just going to be frustrating. It gets so much better.”

Connor sighed and turned to capture his lips. “Fine. But only because I love you. And, regrettably, trust your judgement. But if I still don’t like it by the time we go to bed, I make no promises that I’ll keep going.”

“That’s fair,” Jared agreed. “Guess I’ll just have to keep you up then. We’ve got three weeks.”

“I’ll make you go home and never play this again,” Connor threatened. Jared stuck his tongue out at him, but settled.

Jared turned his switch back on to pick up where he’d left off, staying shoulder to shoulder with Connor so he could check on his boyfriend’s progress and give him tips, but let him experiment with the game a bit while advancing his own story. 

Connor continued to grumble in frustration whenever things didn’t go his way, and after watching him lose to Meg five times in a row, Jared almost had to laugh. He didn’t remember Tartarus taking this long to clear. Connor was probably getting better, but it was obvious that this game did _not_ come easily to him. Which was okay, Connor also tended to be more patient with things like this, and Jared had to admit, he probably would’ve given up if it had taken him this long to get through the first level.

Instead of giving up, though, Jared watched as Connor grew more and more determined, like he refused to let the game win. He continued to complain, but Jared could tell it was more on principle than anything. He knew Connor wouldn’t admit to liking the game until he actually succeeded at it, but the look on his face told Jared everything he needed to know. He leaned over to kiss his cheek again, and Connor scowled as it distracted him in the middle of a room.

“Fuck off,” he grumbled, frantically hitting his special over and over. Jared nodded in appreciation when he noticed Ares’s doom dropping with every hit. Not a bad start, Connor might actually have a chance this time. He paused his game so he could watch as Connor made it out of the room and the next, and then he was in Charon’s shop.

“Babe, get the Poseidon one,” Jared coached him gently.

“Why?” Connor asked. “That’s gonna be like all my coins.”

“Just trust me,” Jared replied, and Connor did as he instructed. “The dash.”

“Dash?”

“Yup. Does really good damage.” Connor hit it and dashed a few times around the room experimentally. His health was still okay, surprisingly, and he did have a death defy left. “Avoid her attacks. Like, if she starts doing something, just run to the other side of the room. It’s gonna be a long fight, but you gotta be patient and wait to hit her when she’s not doing anything.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Connor huffed, but Jared could see him processing the information, the set of his jaw determined as he entered the elusive chamber.

“You’ve got this, baby,” Jared encouraged, and then Connor was going again. He took way more hits early on than Jared would consider ideal, but he soon got his footing and implemented the strategy Jared had outlined. It was stressful, watching a boss fight take this long, especially when Jared himself could clear it in under a minute on a good run, but Connor was remarkably patient, and her health bar slowly decreased. 

Jared found himself holding his breath, barely holding back a sigh of irritation when Connor lost his death defy on one of the traps. Connor didn’t seem fazed, though, just got right back at it, the elaborate routine of dashing and dodging and attacking and dodging that Jared knew he himself had executed at some point, but god, this almost felt like a different video game.

The tension in Connor’s shoulders built with every hit he dealt or took, and Jared could tell this was going to be close. His health was getting dangerously low again, but so was Meg’s, and it would probably just take a few more uninterrupted hits to end it. 

Jared cringed when Connor stepped on another trap and his health dropped further, and his movements became more frantic. He was spamming X over and over, barely even attempting to dodge at this point and Jared worried it was too late, until the screen flashed black and Meg fell into the Styx. 

_Fury Vanquished_

Connor was blinking at his screen in shock, and Jared all but tackled him backwards on the bed.

“You did it!” he exclaimed, pressing kisses all over his boyfriend’s face. “You did it, I’m so proud of you!”

Connor rolled his eyes and set his Switch to the side to fully hug Jared back, and Jared could feel his hands shaking. He knew the feeling.

He died almost immediately in Asphodel, the combination of magma and new foes with long-range attacks too much for him already, but he didn’t even seem disappointed in himself. 

“I hate this game,” he sighed, beginning the process of talking to everyone in the house.

“You totally do not,” Jared teased.

“Okay, well I suck at this game.”

“Maybe,” Jared shrugged. “But isn’t getting better part of the fun?”

Connor didn’t have a response to that, but he redeemed his darkness at the mirror and started another run, and Jared had his answer.

**Author's Note:**

> the fighting crabs game references a game that alex boniello and will roland played on alex's stream for like two minutes one time and i still cant believe that was an actual thing we had to witness, so it simply had to get a mention.
> 
> let me know what you think, and come talk to me on tumblr (starz-in-our-eyes) or twitter (starzinoureyes)!


End file.
